


Learning Curve

by the_gabih



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s04e17 It's a Terrible Life, Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M, Multi, Recreational Drug Use, Team Free Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 23:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_gabih/pseuds/the_gabih
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean leaves Sandover with Sam, for all their good intentions, having little idea about what to do next. Luckily, some more seasoned hunters are willing to step in and help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning Curve

Dean’s cleansing regime lasts for all of a week after his resignation before he ditches it. Apparently this stuff’s kinda hard to keep doing when you’re on the road instead of in an apartment full of mod cons. Who knew?  
  
Other things he’s learning: hours spent in a car make it really hard to get on with the person you spend them with. Also, that Sam Wesson can be a massive dick at sometimes and a total sap at others, that he sleeps on his front, sprawled all over the bed in a pair of ratty pyjama pants (not that he’s paying too much attention to that, really he isn’t), and that he eats far too much takeout for his own good. More importantly, he learns that motel rooms, when you’re budgeting to try and make your last paycheck cover everything for as long as it possibly can, are shit. He and Sam go from getting two rooms in Holiday Expresses to one room with two beds, and from there it’s pretty much all downhill until three months after dispatching the ghost of PT Sandover, Sam talks him into stopping off at one of the roadside motels.  
  
Dean regrets it even before they walk through the door. The room is grimy, dingy, and the motel manager clearly has far too much of a thing for hula girls. The shower stall is faintly slippery with things he doesn’t want to think about, the floor has some seriously suspicious stains, and the less said about the beds, the better. Dean can almost feel himself getting lice, or worse. He dreads to think what a run-over of the sheets with a UV light would reveal.  
  
Sam, the big lump, is out like a light, which leaves him to rifle through the filofax stuffed with legends about ghosts that they’re still not entirely sure are true yet (they’d considered taking on vampire hunts, but the idea of killing something that was solid and human-looking? Yeah, no. That, and Dean had the distinct feeling that their asses would be roundly kicked.) He picks at the crusts of the Wal-Mart sandwiches he’d bought earlier, eyeing what’s left of Sam’s Chinese take-out suspiciously and shivering a little in the night’s chill. But the cheese salad isn’t as appetising as he’d told himself it would be when he bought it, and he’d really rather not fuck up his arteries, thanks, not when he can’t afford medical insurance any more and the loss of the reassurance he’d never realised it offered prickles at him, makes him edgy, and so he shuts their makeshift journal, shrugs on a coat and heads outside, quietly mourning his old sleeping patterns.  
  
There’s a man sitting on the bench a couple rooms down, next to the vending machine. He’s smoking, and as a breeze rolls in across the parking lot, Dean realises it’s weed. Great. The only person around to talk to is a pothead. He almost turns and goes right back inside, but just at that moment the pothead’s head turns, and blue eyes fix on him in a way that makes it impossible for the impeccably socially conditioned Dean to get out of this particular situation without at least saying something. Besides, he’s kinda craving something sweet, and the way the vending machine’s right there when he has fuck-all else to do but gorge himself like the fat kid he used to be makes it a lot harder than it usually is to resist.  
  
So. “Hi.”  
  
The stranger continues to stare at him. He plucks the joint from his lips, breathing out smoke that curls and wreathes and puffs away into nothing. Dean shifts awkwardly, moving from foot to foot before finally stepping forward, the stranger’s eyes following him all the way over to the machine. The chocolate bar can be a reward for him, a prize for putting up with Sam and his stupid girly habits and his stupid filthy motels with their stupid stoner guests. So easy to fall back into his old habits, back into rationalising. The thought’s almost enough to stop him in his tracks, but not quite.  
  
There’s a whirr and a clunk from the machine, and Dean bends to fish his Hershey’s from the bottom. As he does, the stranger speaks at last. “Hello, Dean,” he says, his voice gravel-rough. Dean jerks and the flap falls onto his hand, trapping him there long enough to overbalance him.  
  
“Dude, what the fuck?”  
  
The stranger says nothing. Just stares, with eyes that are surprisingly sharp for a stoner. Dean extracts his hand, tucks his chocolate into a pocket, and stands up so as to make this encounter feel slightly less worrying. “Seriously,” he continues. “How do you know my name?”  
  
“Your partner called you by it. You were talking rather loudly.”  
  
“...right.” In fairness, they kind of were. At least now Dean thinks about it. Sam had still been persuading him about the room even after they’d booked it, while they were walking down here to it. “He’s not my partner.”  
  
“Really?” Pothead raises the joint to his lips and sucks in another breath. Breathes out, and Dean winces as the smoke floats in his direction. He might be talking to this guy, but that doesn’t mean he wants to smell like him. He’s about to say as much when Pothead looks up at him, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. “Are you sure?”  
  
Dean blinks. “What kind of question is that?”  
  
“A perfectly reasonable one, given how much like an old married couple the two of you sounded earlier.”  
  
“Look, I- it’s not like that. I think I’d know if I was bumming my...” His what? Friend? Best friend? He guesses Sam would have to be, seeing as how he’s kind of the only one Dean has left. Turns out the guys at the company were less keen on hanging out with Dean and more keen on fighting each other for his old job after he quit. Which he guesses he should probably have seen coming, but even so. It’s not a pleasant feeling.  
  
“Of course,” the stranger reassures him. Then, “Would you like to be?”  
  
Dean splutters. “Wha-?”  
  
“Cassie,” says a new voice. “Stop teasing the newbie.”  
  
“But he’s so  _easy_ ,” says Pothead. Cassie. Though that sounds like more of a nickname than anything legit (and Dean is not thinking of the last Cassie he knew, the Cassie who’s been faithfully reporting from every Occupy protest to date, the Cassie he still can’t believe put up with his shit for as long as she did. Not at all.) “Or would you rather I pointed a gun at him and told him this hunt’s ours, and that he and his friend should get out and see if they can’t find something easier?”  
  
Wait. What? Dean blinks, first at Cassie, then at the new guy, who’s lounging against the door he’s guessing is theirs with a lollipop wedged into the corner of his smirking mouth. “You’re hunters?”  
  
“Got it in one, dollface.” The smirk tinges new guy’s voice, and there’s a small pop as he takes the lolly out of his mouth. “And frankly, you oughta be thanking your lucky stars or whatever deity you believe in that it’s us you stumbled upon. The others are a mixed bunch.”  
  
Cassie snorts. “That’s putting it mildly.”  
  
“Quite. But like I said,” new guy continues. “We’re here to help. Just not with any ‘ohhh my family are all dead woe is me’ stuff, we’re shit at that, keep it to yourself.”  
  
New guy, Dean decides, is a bit of a dick. And he’s far from convinced about Cassie, too. So of course, because the universe is apparently determined to keep Dean from getting more than a few words in edgeways, this is the point at which Sam chooses to appear in their doorway, sleep-ruffled and yawning widely.  
  
“Dean? What’s going on?”  
  
And of course, he’s not wearing a shirt. Why would he be? Dean can almost hear new guy drooling next to him. And Cassie. Not that he can blame them, even if fancying the guy he’s building his new life around is probably not the best of ideas (fuck, that sounds cheesy, even in his head.) “Nothing.”  
  
New guy shoots him an unimpressed look. “We were just talking about how the two of you are totally new at this, your only knowledge of how to take this thing down probably comes from the Ghostfacers, and how my little brother and I were willing to lend you a hand with it before you get your pert little asses eviscerated by a homicidal dead chick.”  
  
Sam stares at him suspiciously. “And why would you want to do that?”  
  
“Because, big boy, there aren’t nearly enough men in this world as pretty as you two, and it’d be a pity to lose another two.”  
  
Cassie hums agreement, his eyes flicking between Sam and Dean as he blows out another cloud of smoke. Sam’s nose wrinkles a little, somewhat adorably, but he moves to sit on the arm of the bench. “No, really.”  
  
“Yes, really,” says new guy. “Cross my heart. That, and this one isn’t much of a conversationalist.” He jerks his thumb in Cassie’s direction. “Least, not if you want to talk about anything other than philosophy and new-age shit.” The smirk takes on extra width then. “He’s fuckin’ awesome at physical communication though, if you get my drift.”  
  
Dean stares. “I thought you said you were brothers.”  
  
“Yeah.” New guy shrugs. “Consenting adults, too. Doing consenting adult things. Why, does that bother you?”  
  
Dean blinks. Splutters. Looks at Sam, who stares back and seems to realise that if they want to give a vaguely coherent answer to that question, it’s gonna have to come from him. “No?”  
  
“Well, that’s settled then,” new guy says, grinning. He reaches over, grabs Dean’s arm and tugs him towards their motel room. “C’mon. First lesson: how to ward your room so you don’t get eaten in your sleep. Tomorrow we’ll go get your tattoos, and if you’re both very, very good, Cassie and I might just let you join in the post-celebratory dinner sex.”  
  
Dean is pushed into a chair without ceremony, and new guy somehow manages to end up in his lap despite the fact that Dean’s fairly certain he hadn’t tugged him down with him or anything. Dean cranes his head round, intending to get Sam to help, to extract him from the situation or something, but he’s meekly following Cassie over to the end of the bed, where the other guy curls up against his side and leans over to stub out his joint on an ash tray that’s been left on the floor.  
  
“First things first,” says new guy. “They call me Gabriel, and that one Castiel. We’ve been hunting since we were kids. You’re Dean Smith and Sam Wesson, former worker bees for The Man. You’re newbies, and you’ve probably only survived as long as you have because you watched some YouTube videos, and you’re stupidly lucky. That means that what Castiel and I say goes. Got that?” He doesn’t wait for a response, just points over to the door and the line of what looks like salt beneath it. “Second, you need to get waaay more salt than you have now, because that shit over there? The salt lines in the doorway and window? That shit, laid down in every way into a room, will save your life.”  
  
“How did you know-”  
  
“Ssh.” Gabriel puts a finger to Dean’s lips. “Adults are talking. Now, time for some devil’s traps...”  
  
Dean learns more in that night and the weeks following than he has in years. And not all of it about hunting, either; as they fall into step with the older hunters, as they move from city to city, chasing ghosts and vampires and things too gruesome to ever be featured in chick lit, Dean starts to learn Gabriel and Cas and Sam. He becomes fluent in the language of Sam’s bitchfaces, of Castiel’s stares and Gabriel’s choice of sweets. He learns to read Castiel by the types of drug paraphernalia that appears in their rooms, or the smell that’s left behind, learns that Gabriel piles on the snark when he’s uncomfortable or hurting, and the flirting when he’s not. Learns that Sam has a forceful, dominating side that he’s kept hidden for years- as does Castiel- and that he finds that more of a turn-on than he was expecting. And after that...  
  
Well. What he learns after that is the type of thing that will never, ever end up in a journal of any kind. But he considers it very worthwhile information nonetheless.


End file.
